January 30, 2009

While the world watches the ruins in Gaza, you return to your home which remains standing. However, I am sure that it is clear to you that someone was in your home while you were away.

I am that someone.

I spent long hours imagining how you would react when you walked into your home.How you would feel when you understood that IDF soldiers had slept on your mattresses and used your blankets to keep warm.

I knew that it would make you angry and sad and that you would feel this violation of the most intimate areas of your life by those defined as your enemies, with stinging humiliation.I am convinced that you hate me with unbridled hatred, and you do not have even the tiniest desire to hear what I have to say.At the same time, it is important for me to say the following in the hope that there is even the minutest chance that you will hear me.

I spent many days in your home.You and your family's presence was felt in every corner.I saw your family portraits on the wall, and I thought of my family.I saw your wife's perfume bottles on the bureau, and I thought of my wife.I saw your children's toys and their English language schoolbooks. I saw your personal computer and how you set up the modem and wireless phone next to the screen, just as I do.

I wanted you to know that despite the immense disorder you found in your house that was created during a search for explosives and tunnels (which were indeed found in other homes), we did our best to treat your possessions with respect.When I moved the computer table, I disconnected the cables and lay them down neatly on the floor, as I would do with my own computer.I even covered the computer from dust with a piece of cloth.I tried to put back the clothes that fell when we moved the closet although not the same as you would have done, but at least in such a way that nothing would get lost.

I know that the devastation, the bullet holes in your walls and the destruction of those homes near you place my descriptions in a ridiculous light.Still, I need you to understand me, us, and hope that you will channel your anger and criticism to the right places.

I decided to write you this letter specifically because I stayed in your home.

I can surmise that you are intelligent and educated and there are those in your household that are university students.Your children learn English, and you are connected to the Internet. You are not ignorant; you know what is going on around you.

Therefore, I am sure you know that Qassam rockets were launched from your neighborhood into Israeli towns and cities.

How could you see these weekly launches and not think that one day we would say "enough"?! Did you ever consider that it is perhaps wrong to launch rockets at innocent civilians trying to lead a normal life, much like you? How long did you think we would sit back without reacting?

I can hear you saying "it's not me, it's Hamas".My intuition tells me you are not their most avid supporter.If you look closely at the sad reality in which your people live, and you do not try to deceive yourself or make excuses about "occupation", you must certainly reach the conclusion that the Hamas is your real enemy.

The reality is so simple, even a seven year old can understand: Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip, removing military bases and its citizens from Gush Katif.Nonetheless, we continued to provide you with electricity, water, and goods (and this I know very well as during my reserve duty I guarded the border crossings more than once, and witnessed hundreds of trucks full of goods entering a blockade-free Gaza every day).

Despite all this, for reasons that cannot be understood and with a lack of any rational logic, Hamas launched missiles on Israeli towns.For three years we clenched our teeth and restrained ourselves. In the end, we could not take it anymore and entered the Gaza strip, into your neighborhood, in order to remove those who want to kill us.A reality that is painful but very easy to explain.

As soon as you agree with me that Hamas is your enemy and because of them, your people are miserable, you will also understand that the change must come from within.I am acutely aware of the fact that what I say is easier to write than to do, but I do not see any other way.You, who are connected to the world and concerned about your children's education, must lead, together with your friends, a civil uprising against Hamas.

I swear to you, that if the citizens of Gaza were busy paving roads, building schools, opening factories and cultural institutions instead of dwelling in self pity, arms smuggling and nurturing a hatred to your Israeli neighbors, your homes would not be in ruins right now.If your leaders were not corrupt and motivated by hatred, your home would not have been harmed.If someone would have stood up and shouted that there is no point in launching missiles on innocent civilians, I would not have to stand in your kitchen as a soldier.

You don't have money, you tell me?You have more than you can imagine.

Even before Hamas took control of Gaza, during the time of Yasser Arafat, millions if not billions of dollars donated by the world community to the Palestinians was used for purchasing arms or taken directly to your leaders bank accounts.Gulf States, the emirates - your brothers, your flesh and blood, are some of the richest nations in the world.If there was even a small feeling of solidarity between Arab nations, if these nations had but the smallest interest in reconstructing the Palestinian people * your situation would be very different.

You must be familiar with Singapore.The land mass there is not much larger than the Gaza strip and it is considered to be the second most populated country in the world.Yet, Singapore is a successful, prospering, and well managed country.Why not the same for you?

My friend, I would like to call you by name, but I will not do so publicly.

I want you to know that I am 100% at peace with what my country did, what my army did, and what I did.However, I feel your pain.I am sorry for the destruction you are finding in your neighborhood at this moment.

On a personal level, I did what I could to minimize the damage to your home as much as possible.

In my opinion, we have a lot more in common than you might imagine.I am a civilian, not a soldier, and in my private life I have nothing to do with the military.However, I have an obligation to leave my home, put on a uniform, and protect my family every time we are attacked.I have no desire to be in your home wearing a uniform again and I would be more than happy to sit with you as a guest on your beautiful balcony, drinking sweet tea seasoned with the sage growing in your garden.

The only person who could make that dream a reality is you. Take responsibility for yourself, your family, your people, and start to take control of your destiny. How?I do not know.Maybe there is something to be learned from the Jewish people who rose up from the most destructive human tragedy of the 20th century, and instead of sinking into self-pity, built a flourishing and prospering country.It is possible, and it is in your hands.I am ready to be there to provide a shoulder of support and help to you.

January 25, 2009

I don't often reprint other people's articles on this blog, but this is a worthwhile message for our troubled times (and our troubled European continent) from The Spectator

The Terrible Warning of a Holocaust Survivor

Douglas Davis is shocked by what she has to say, by the anti-Semitism that is increasing all around us and by the widespread embrace of Hamas in Europe

At my dinner table on Friday night, a holocaust survivor admits that she is trying to persuade her son to take his family out of Europe to America, Canada, Australia, Canada, Australia, Israel...’They say they can’t leave me, but I tell them: “Go, get out. My parents left my grandparents behind in Berlin and brought me to safety in England. Now I want you to leave so that my grandchildren will be safe.”’ There is an unbearable desperation in her plea. But she has a point.

As tens of thousands of demonstrators march through the streets of Europe, the chants are modified but the message remains substantially intact: ‘Hamas, Hamas, Hamas — Jews to the Gas’. Or, more simply: ‘Death to the Jews’. Many European Jews, even well-established, affluent Jews, have been checking the suitcase they keep packed under the bed. They have been here before and many are (albeit reluctantly) reading the writing on the wall.

To some extent I thought I was inured. I grew up in postwar apartheid South Africa where a subtle undercurrent of anti-Semitism was a fact of everyday life. So while I was disturbed by manifestations of mob anti-Semitism, I was also less vulnerable to shock. That’s just how people are. Living in genteel, leafy Hampstead Garden Suburb provides an additional layer of protection from such crass outbursts.

But my sanguine state ends abruptly when I am out walking on Saturday. A hundred yards from my front door, I encounter the slogan, freshly painted in yellow, across the pavement: ‘Kill the Filthy Jews’. I am shocked. And shocked that I am shocked. The message is too close for comfort. The leafy gentility is, after all, an illusion.

Those who study these matters tell me that the current convulsion of anti-Semitism is the worst in a generation. They also say that there is a direct, causal link with the Israeli military operation against Hamas in Gaza. Once upon a time, anti-Israel protesters insisted they were motivated by political animus against Zionism rather than racial prejudice against Jews. The Hamas Charter, which sets out of the guiding principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement — xenophobic, racist and anti-Semitic — removes the distinction.

Last week Basim Naim, the Hamas Minister of Health in Gaza, sought to capitalise on the wave of European support for his movement and to confer some respectability on Hamas among those who lean to the left. Writing in the Guardian, he decried the ‘continuing attempt to discredit and demonise Hamas’. Boldly, he asserted: ‘Our struggle is not against the Jewish people, but against oppression and occupation. This is not a religious war. We have no quarrel with the Jewish people’.

Mr Naim’s disingenuous depiction of Hamas as a friend of the Jews took my sense of credulity to a place that is accessible only to my psychiatrist. The ideology contained in the Hamas Charter (which was adopted in 1987, not 1887), leaves no room for interpretation. ‘Our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave,’ it declares. Every Muslim is enjoined to confront the enemy in the land of the Muslims: ‘a woman must fight the enemy even without her husband’s authorisation, and a slave without his master’s permission... In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad. We must...join the ranks of the Jihad fighters’.

Article Seven of the Charter provides the religious justification: ‘The Prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: “The [end of days] will not come until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: ‘Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!’”’

Then the Hamas Charter morphs into the oldest hatred: primitive, European anti-Semitism. Jews, says the Charter, have accumulated ‘huge and influential wealth’ which they use to implement their ‘dream’. It has allowed them to take over the world media and to foment revolutions (the French and Communist revolutions receive special mention) in order to ‘fulfil their interests and pick the fruit’. The Jews, it says, used their influence to start both world wars and they used their money to ‘establish clandestine organisations which are spreading around the world to destroy societies and promote Zionist interests’. Among these ‘destructive spying organisations’, the Hamas Charter makes special mention of the Freemasons, Rotary clubs, Lions clubs and B’nai B’rith.

This psychopathic babble is unpleasant stuff, but, like it or not, that is the formally enshrined ideological platform and considered worldview of Hamas. It should be dismissed with contempt, but its message resonates in important Middle East capitals, from Tehran to Damascus and Doha. Sadly, it has found an echo on the streets of Europe, too.

All this raises some important questions. What part of the Hamas message inspires tens of thousands from the left, right and centre of the political spectrum to take to the streets of Europe with their chants of support for Hamas and hatred of Jews? What part of that noxious Hamas ideology is so compelling that it has led some into violent confrontation with the police? And where are those protestors when Muslims are killed in other conflicts, from Afghanistan and Chechnya to Darfur and the Philippines?

Hamas has provided the touchpaper for a Thirties-style outburst in Europe. Anti-Semitism is rampant. Synagogues are burned and Jewish cemeteries are desecrated, while individual Jews are met with gratuitous verbal and, at times, physical abuse in the street.

In Britain, a cross-party group of MPs is moved to speak of their ‘horror’ as ‘a wave of anti-Semitic incidents has affected the Jewish community’. There is, they note, a ‘discernible sense of anxiety and vulnerability’ among British Jews.

In Germany, anti-Semitic violence directed at Jewish institutions is reported to be spreading nationwide after a police officer guarding a synagogue in Berlin’s Mitte district, the pre-war centre of Jewish life, was attacked with an iron bar.

In Italy, the Flaica-Uniti-Cub trade union, which represents workers in shops and malls, calls for a boycott of businesses with Jewish associations, directing shoppers to focus particularly on clothing stores, many of which, the union pointed out, are traditionally owned by Italian Jews. And in Denmark — Denmark! — schools with large numbers of Muslim pupils are refusing to enrol Jews because, they say, their security cannot be assured.

There can be no doubt that, for many, Israel-hatred is a cover for Jew-hatred. There can also be no doubt that this figleaf is becoming redundant. The contagion has passed through the membrane and the post-Holocaust taboo against open expressions of anti-Semitism is slipping away.

The Hamas Health Minister might have been stretching the truth when he said ‘we have no quarrel with the Jewish people’. Sadly, though, he was not telling fibs when he said he and his comrades ‘welcome and appreciate the stand taken by leading Jewish figures in Britain and around the world against Israel’s aggression against Gaza and for the rights of our people’.

I am hoping that my psychiatrist will be able to explain why so many Jews have been propelled into the arms of those who seek their destruction. Precisely what part of the Hamas Charter are they defending?

January 23, 2009

Probably the most amazing piece of footage to come out of the Gaza conflict. This shows Golani troops being ambushed by Hamas terrorists hiding behind a bush. Our boys get the better of the terrorists - but watch HERE what happens when the terrorist throws his last grenade.

January 21, 2009

As I prepare to turn in for the night, I get the distinct feeling that I may be the only person on the planet who hasn't watched or tuned into Barack Obama's inauguration ceremony today.

I have a distinct aversion to mass hysteria of the kind that we've seen pouring out over a guy with nothing much to show on his past record other than the times he voted 'present' in Congress and the books he wrote about himself.

The only thing that is truly appropriate to celebrate - and rejoice over - is that a black man has become President of the United States. That's a true milestone and achievement for America and a challenge to the WASPish elites in Europe.Sure he's a folksy guy, a wonderful public speaker and performer. But as for substance - it's truly hard to find anyone he measures up to.

Except possibly Abraham Lincoln, whose bible was reportedly used for the swearing-in.

If there's one thing Obama HAS achieved so far, it is to solidly disprove Lincoln's most famous maxim:

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

Young Barack might just turn out to be the most successful snake-oil salesman ever, in all American history.

January 20, 2009

The adulation of the untested Obama is matched only by the dissing of George W Bush whom the Intelligentsia like to brand as the Village Idiot.

Until we actually see the new president in action, we can only speculate on his approach to the world's problems. A useful guide is to note the company he keeps.

Jimmy Carter is one of his closest advisors, particularly when it comes to the Middle East.

It's therefore useful to remember Carter's last day in office as president in 1981. Here he is sitting in the Oval Office waiting on a call from the mullahs in Teheran which he hoped would announce the release of 52 US embassy staff who had been held hostage for 444 days.

On the last day of his presidency Bush waits for no phone calls. He celebrates the handover of power to his successor in Washington knowing that he has had the guts to do what Carter couldn't do.

January 19, 2009

Today there is only one person on my mind.Jonathan Jay Pollard.He has been in prison for 8,460 daysToday is the last day on which he might be pardoned by outgoing President George W Bush.

The odds are stacked against Pollard, just as they were when Clinton left office. (Bill saved his pardons for fraudsters like Marc Rich and the Gregorys, friends of his brother-in-law Tony Rodham who, it was later revealed, was paid a $100,000 bribe by the felons.)

Bush is a decent man, and I would have thought he'd be reading those thousands of "Free Pollard" faxes with a heavy heart. But the CIA has huge leverage and is determined to see Pollard rot in jail as an example to other Jews working in the security establishment.

But aside from the traditions of transition, the President is entitled to grant a pardon at ANY time.

How embarrassing it might therefore be, if instead of being pardoned by Bush on his last day in office, Pollard were pardoned by Obama on his first?

January 18, 2009

I'm reproducing this full page I've received from that great organization, Palestinian Media Watch regarding the internecine murders in Gaza which are bound to gain pace as Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party try to take advantage of the vastly weakened Hamas forces, to regain control over Gaza. The page is reporduced with all its video links which are worth watching.

If this is how Arabs treat Arabs, what future is there for infidels and us Yahuds in any Two-State solution?

Gaza Update 14Jan. 18, 2009

Palestinian Media Watch

Hamas gangs kill Fatah members in Gaza

Hamas has murdered "dozens of Fatah members" in the Gaza Strip for merely violating the Hamas-imposed house arrest. According to the Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida the atrocities, which also included shooting people in the legs, has created a backlash in the West Bank and caused "anger, which influenced the level of popular activities carried out in solidarity with the Gaza residents in the towns Ramallah and El-Bira."

In addition, the popular Palestinian singer, Jamal Najar, condemned Hamas as "gangs of anarchic security forces," describing how Hamas murdered his cousin right in front of his children for simply stepping outside. [PA TV(Fatah)]

The following are excerpts from the article in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and the transcript of the words of Jamal Najar:

Headline: "Reports of persecutions and liquidation of Fatah members by Hamas members evoke anxiety and condemnation in the West Bank."

Reports mentioning liquidations of Fatah members in the Gaza Strip by members of Hamas evoked popular condemnation which was added yesterday to the erupting anger, which influenced the level of popular activities carried out in solidarity with the Gaza residents in the towns Ramallah and El-Bira.

The reports from Gaza pointed out the death of dozens of Fatah members caused by Hamas members. A prominent leader stated that isolated random incidents of murder have occurred, but ruled out that this is a case of organized persecution.

Wafa A-Najar, Gaza resident who lives in the town El-Bira, said that her father was killed the day before yesterday and nine of her family members were injured by shooting by Hamas, among them were three small children and two young people in critical condition...

According to the family's story, a squad belonging to Hamas came to her family's house in [the] Sheikh Radwan [neighborhood] in Gaza and shot at the legs of young Badran A-Najar, claiming that he was violating the house arrest which was imposed on him, at the time when he was sitting with his cousins in front of the house...

A prominent leader in the Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip, Ibrahim Abu A-Naja, ruled out that this is a case of persecution by some organization, which aims at Fatah, however he pointed out that "a number of isolated incidents [of murder]" had occurred, as has been reported by the Israeli media...

Abu A-Naja called for Hamas to halt any step which provides Israel the opportunity to attack us...

Groups within the Fatah movement in the West Bank estimated that more than a hundred of its people in the Gaza Strip had been exposed to persecution, shooting, and liquidation."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Fatah), Jan. 9, 2009]

Jamal Najar, popular Palestinian singer:

"I express my condolences to my cousins, some of them were killed yesterday by the gangs of the anarchic [Hamas] security forces in the Gaza Strip... The father was killed right in front of his children, because he didn't stay at home, after they placed him under house arrest, he and everyone who belongs to Fatah."

Today we hear of yet another anti-Israel resolution passed by the United Nations. Like most Jews, I've lost count of the total they've handed down since Israel's formation, but it must be getting close to the number of square-miles in the shrinking Jewish State.

Before you give this resolution the slightest bit of credence, watch this speech given by the director of UN-Watch, Hillel Neuer, in March 2007 - and which the UN banned!

Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, Réné Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here, on the banks of Lake Geneva, to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today, we ask: What has become of their noble dream?

In this session we see the answer. Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution, and violence against women, what has the Council pronounced, and what has it decided?

Nothing. Its response has been silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal.

One might say, in Harry Truman’s words, that this has become a Do-Nothing, Good-for-Nothing Council.

But that would be inaccurate. This Council has, after all, done something.

It has enacted one resolution after another condemning one single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements—and there will be three more this session—Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world—millions upon millions of victims, in 191 countries—continue to go ignored.

So yes, this Council is doing something. And the Middle East dictators who orchestrate this campaign will tell you it is a very good thing. That they seek to protect human rights, Palestinian rights.

So too, the racist murderers and rapists of Darfur women tell us they care about the rights of Palestinian women; the occupiers of Tibet care about the occupied; and the butchers of Muslims in Chechnya care about Muslims.

But do these self-proclaimed defenders truly care about Palestinian rights?

Let us consider the past few months. More than 130 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian forces. This is three times the combined total that were the pretext for calling special sessions against Israel in July and November. Yet the champions of Palestinian rights—Ahmadinejad, Assad, Khaddafi, John Dugard—they say nothing. Little 3-year-old boy Salam Balousha and his two brothers were murdered in their car by Prime Minister Haniyeh’s troops. Why has this Council chosen silence?

Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the despots who run this Council couldn’t care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights.

They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek something else: To distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights.

You ask: What has become of the founders’ dream? Of Eleanor Roosevelt, of Rene Casssin, of John Humphrey, P.C. Chang, Charles Malik, who assembled here in Geneva sixty years ago? With terrible lies and moral inversion, it is being turned into a nightmare.

Thank you, Mr. President.

REPLY BY UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL PRESIDENT LUIS ALFONSO DE ALBA:

For the first time in this session I will not express thanks for that statement. I shall point out to the distinguished representative of the organization that just spoke, the distinguished representative of United Nations Watch, if you'd kindly listen to me. I am sorry that I'm not in a position to thank you for your statement. I should mention that I will not tolerate any similar statements in the Council.The way in which members of this Council were referred to, and indeed the way in which the council itself was referred to, all of this is inadmissible. In the memory of the persons that you referred to, founders of the Human Rights Commission, and for the good of human rights, I would urge you in any future statements to observe some minimum proper conduct and language. Otherwise, any statement you make in similar tones to those used today will be taken out of the records.

and .... ZALMI'S FOOTNOTE

The UN is a farce. How can you take seriously an institution whose Human Rights Council is chaired by Nigeria, slated by the US state department as one of the worst offenders in state oppression of its citizens with executions, amputations, forced female circumcision, child slavery, human trafficking, torture and extortion.

Its so-called 'relief works branch', UNRWAH, has done more than even the jihadists to prolong the suffering of Palestinian people by keeping the refugee camps going when their occupants could - and should - have been resettled decades ago. (The Palestinian people have received more US/EU aid per capita than any group in the history of mankind. Had all this money not been stolen by Arafat and embezzled for arms procurement, every Palestinian family would now be living in a detached home with a Merc in the drive.)

There are dozens of documented complaints of UNRWAH complicity with Palestinian terror groups. Their peacekeepers too are entirely useless, turning a blind eye to Hizbullah's massive re-arming and building of new war tunnels on Lebanon's border with Israel.

All the while, their useless freeloading 'observers' in Israel scoot around Israel in their brand new white UN landrovers living the 'Life of Reilly' screwing Jewish prostitutes and pubbing every night. All at taxpayers' expense. They pay no taxes, no parking fines, no-nothing.

And let's not dig up the scandal of the UN's former Secretary General - Nazi Wermacht officer Kurt Waldheim - whose chutzpah of standing for a 3rd term was blocked by China's veto.

January 08, 2009

Clearly you delight in your freedom of speech and the right to publicly protest in this country.

The only reason you are free to do so is because our parents and grandparents confronted Hitler's tyranny 70 years ago.

People like you would clearly have been demonstrating against Churchill in the 1940's, for his bombing of Dresden (carried out, incidentally,in retaliation for a lot less than the 6,500 rocket attacks on little Israel).

You should consider yourself very fortunate that your useful idiot forbears in WW2 did not prevail, otherwise your placards last night might well have been written in German (if, that is, you had beenallowed out to demo after Gestapo curfew).

January 05, 2009

January 04, 2009

He Who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - may He bless the fighters of the Israel Defense Force, who stand guard over our land and the cities of our God from the border of the Lebanon to the desert of Egypt, and from the Great Sea unto the approach of the Aravah, on the land, in the air, and on the sea.

May HASHEM cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them. May the Holy One, Blessed is He, preserve and rescue our fighting men from every trouble and distress and from every plague and illness, and may He send blessing and success in their every endeavor.

May He lead our enemies under their sway and may He grant them salvation and crown them with victory. And may there be fulfilled for them the verse: For it is Hashem, your God, Who goes with you to battle your enemies for you to save you.